Broadband distribution networks as such are known e.g. from the 8/1994 brochure "The Telecommunications Engineer", pages 5-10, 22-25 and 29-30, Heidecker Publications. A broadband distribution network is described which, in addition to different kinds of unidirectional TV-services, also provides bidirectional, interactive video services. Subscribers receive television and video signals over a downstream channel, and are able to request their subscriber-specific video signal from the server over a return channel. The concept of access to the return channel is e.g. in two steps. The first step uses an access method with central control. The individual subscribers of a network segment are e.g. assigned time slots using time-division multiplexing for the transmission of the subscriber-specific information. In a second step, the network segments are combined in cell-structure form and are transmitted with an individual node address to the server. In this way the return channel is divided into subscriber-specific channels. This has the disadvantage e.g. of a low transmission rate per subscriber.